Paul Ryan raises cash, GOP spirits during Houston visit

Taking a brief break from the campaign trail in the key swing state of Ohio, Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan flew into Houston Tuesday evening for another vital campaign chore: fundraising.

He spoke briefly to 630 supporters at a $1,000-a-person reception at the Hotel St. Regis – $10,000 for a photo opportunity – before dropping in on a $25,000-per-couple private dinner at an undisclosed Houston residence.

The Wisconsin congressman arrived in Texas after finishing up a “Romney Plan for a Stronger Middle Class” three-day bus tour through Ohio. With Texas firmly in the red column, neither Ryan nor running mate Mitt Romney has a compelling reason to visit Texas other than to raise money. Romney, in fact, was in Houston recently for a $50,000-a-plate luncheon at the Houstonian for energy executives.

In low-key, almost perfunctory remarks, Ryan told his listeners that “this is the most important election in your generation. This is a huge generation-defining, trajectory-picking election. Please note that we understand that. Mitt Romney and I get that.”

President Barack Obama, he said, “has applied different ideas and different principles that are really sort of antithetical to the American idea to governing. …When you take a look at the fork of the road where we’re at right now, just try to imagine four more years of this. Think what he would be uninhibited. Think what he would be if he never had to face voters again.”

Ryan warned that the nation was headed toward a European-style economic breakdown and promised “very specific ideas and solutions based on this country’s core founding principles.”

He didn’t offer them Tuesday evening beyond calling for taking advantage of a coming energy boom as a result of new technology, cleaning up the nation’s education system and ensuring we “make more things in America, grow more things in America and sell them overseas.”

The seven-term congressman, chair of the House Budget Committee, said the nation’s need to cut spending “was one of the primary reasons Mitt asked me to join the ticket. He said, ‘I see the crisis coming. You know, some of you have been reformers in Congress, you know how to fight this fight, you know how to move the ball. I want to get that done. Help me do this.’ ”

With Romney, he said, “this man and this moment are meeting perfectly for this time in history, because after getting the runaround for four years we need a turnaround.”

Ryan lauded Romney’s business experience.

“Being successful in business, that’s a very good thing to have,” he said. “If you listen to President Obama, it’s as if it’s some kind of liability.”

Obama is “an enormously partisan president,” Ryan said. “This is the third president I’ve served with. I’ve never seen the acrimony, the bitter partisanship. He doesn’t talk to anybody.”

Romney, he said, governed Massachusetts without demeaning the state’s Democratic majority and without compromising his principles. “That’s the kind of leadership we need in this country,” he said.

Ryan arrived in Houston in the wake of grumbling by some of his fellow Republicans that he has not been used effectively by the Romney campaign in his month-and-a-half as the vice-presidential nominee. He was expected to bring force and specificity to the campaign’s critique of Obama on the economy, while offering a compelling GOP alternative. Instead, his critics say, he has become as cautious and unspecific as the man at the head of the ticket.

“In many ways, the frustration that many Republicans have with the misuse of Ryan is merely a component of their broader and long-standing dissatisfaction with Romney as the GOP’s presidential candidate,” said Rice University political scientist Mark Jones. The campaign has to make sure, Jones said, that he doesn’t “overshadow the party’s presidential candidate.”